Health secretary publishes outcomes that will make NHS care “at least as good as any in world”

doi:10.1136/bmj.c7354

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Zosia Kmietowicz

¹London

The government has published the health outcomes against which the NHS will be judged and which it says will refocus the NHS on patients’ health rather than centrally driven process targets.

The Department of Health for England says that the NHS Outcomes Framework will provide a national overview of what the NHS will aim for when improving patients’ outcomes. It will also hold the NHS Commissioning Board to account when assessing how well the NHS is performing from 2012-13.

Over the next two years the framework “will set the direction of travel” of the NHS. No “levels of ambition” will be set during this time, but the framework indicators will be refined, definitions formulated, and baselines set.

The framework focuses on tackling inequalities in outcomes in five areas or “domains”: